


Anywhere I Want (Just Not Home)

by AmorousGreen



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e22 Becoming Part 2, Gen, Introspection, Trick or Treat: Trick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27100486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmorousGreen/pseuds/AmorousGreen
Summary: Buffy Summers has saved the world for the last time.She walks out of the mansion where she condemned her lover to Hell. Walks out of the house her mother told her not to come back to. Watches the friends she has failed time and again talking on the campus of the school she’s been expelled from, and cannot bring herself to face them.There is nothing in Sunnydale left for her, so she hops the next bus going anywhere.
Relationships: past Buffy/Angelus
Comments: 7
Kudos: 7
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	Anywhere I Want (Just Not Home)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRaven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/gifts).



> Title from “my tears ricochet” by Taylor Swift.
> 
> I’m not usually much of an angst writer, but the muse wants what it wants, and apparently sometimes that means post-Becoming angst and reflection on the ways season two could have gone even worse.
> 
> Happy(?) Trick or Treat!

Buffy Summers has saved the world for the last time.

She walks out of the mansion where she condemned her lover to Hell. Walks out of the house her mother told her not to come back to. Watches the friends she has failed time and again talking on the campus of the school she’s been expelled from, and cannot bring herself to face them.

There is nothing in Sunnydale left for her, so she hops the next bus going anywhere.

She thought she’d hit rock bottom the day after her birthday, that horrible night when everything she thought she’d known in the world stopped making sense. She thought she’d hit rock bottom when she let a demon into her bed and then kept coming back for more. She thought she’d hit rock bottom when she raced into the library, too late, to find Kendra’s body and her friends injured and scattered.

She hadn’t known what rock bottom was till now.

Willow and Xander and Giles think her the hero still, stalwart and true. They don’t know her weakness. They don’t know, and trust her too much to guess, that she’s spent the past months betraying them and her duty and the memory of love by letting herself become a demon’s whore.

They don’t know how she’d allowed the sadistic shell of her one-time love to debauch and degrade her, and known it for no more than she deserved. They don’t know how many times she’d lied when she dismissed her bruises as the result of a rough patrol. They don’t know about the nights he affected kindness and she could almost forget, and how the torment of hope hurt so much worse than his outright cruelty.

They don’t know that when she asked Willow to do the curse, it wasn’t out of any hope of having her boyfriend back, but only because she’d spent so long proving she didn’t have the strength to kill him. And then it all went wrong and she had to kill him anyway. She had to confront him with a sword in her hand and Xander’s instruction to “kick his ass” ringing in her ears and the fate of the world hanging in the balance.

And just when she’d finally screwed her determination to the sticking place to do what she must, they’d tried the spell again without warning and he was her Angel again. One last twist of the knife from fate: she’d sent him to Hell loving her. (Because he didn’t remember, only because he didn’t remember. If he knew the things she’d done with his demon, surely he would have hated her as she hated her.)

Now she is denied even the cold comfort of her tormentor’s bed. Her angel and her demon both are gone, dead at her hand. Because it was her sacred duty.

She’d done her duty, and it took all the strength she had. She has no more to give a world that has taken everything good in her life and torn it to pieces. The world doesn’t need a Slayer like her.

She should have stayed retired when she moved to Sunnydale, shouldn’t have let her new friends lure her into caring again. Instead it’s her fault Angel lost his soul, her fault Kendra is dead and Giles was tortured and Willow spent the night hospitalized for head trauma. Buffy can take a hint when she’s hit over the head with it enough times: her love brings only pain and suffering for herself and everyone she cares about.

She should have stayed dead when the Master killed her, let the mantle pass on properly to Kendra who bore duty and isolation as a Slayer should, who never would have succumbed to Buffy’s hubris in thinking she could have it all. Kendra made none of the mistakes that she did, so why is it that Kendra is dead and Buffy yet lives?

There’s a part of her that almost wishes that she’d fallen in the battle or that the portal had taken her too (surely she deserved it more). But the battle is over and the portal is sealed and here she stands. It’s not in her nature to just give up. It’s not in her nature to go seeking death, so she has to find a way to live with herself.

She watches the scenery pass out the bus window, hoping she can run far enough and lose herself thoroughly enough that with time she can learn to live like a person again. She will be a weapon no more. Does she still know how to be a girl?

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy and that this isn’t too bleak. It’s a snapshot of Buffy at her lowest, but she’s not one to stay beaten down for long; even though this Buffy is more broken than in canon, I have no doubt that she’ll still bounce back.


End file.
